Intellectual property (IP) assets are very valuable in many fields of business. They have formed a major part of the group of intangible property assets which have gained increasing importance for corporations. Intellectual property comprises patents, trademarks, service marks, copyrights, trade secrets and other forms of proprietary knowledge.
Creating, developing and managing intellectual property to fully exploit its potential value has become a main goal for many IP rights owners, particularly large corporations. Current IP portfolio systems are typically managed manually and day-by-day by responsible IP personnel. The IP portfolio manager reviews the invention disclosure and rates the disclosure based on advice of team members. The rating will determine if the disclosure is to be filed as a patent application, closed (if no further action is deemed necessary) or published as a defensive publication. Such decisions are typically ad-hoc and prone to personal biases of the decision maker.
From the foregoing discussion, it is desirable to provide an improved system that can manage and optimize an IP portfolio based on objective valuation.